December ISM Manufacturing Report- Mixed Message

The December ISM Manufacturing Report is out, and the headline story is good news.

But the full report is a bit of a mixed bag for our industry.

Manufacturing is back in expansion mode as the Purchasing Manager’s Index, “‘The PMI™,’ registered 50.7 percent, an increase of 1.2 percentage points from November’s reading of 49.5 percent, indicating expansion in manufacturing for only the third time in the last seven months. This month’s PMI™ reading moved manufacturing off its low point for 2012 in November.” – ISM Report Dec 2012

Precision machining is an industry of Fabricated Metal Products. Four of our most important market segments were also in decline in December: Transportation Equipment; Machinery; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components. The market we see is not as rosy as the headline.

In addition, the New Orders component of the survey, at 50.3, went unchanged. This suggests that new orders, the source of our business’s future production, was virtually unchanged in December. The backlog of orders component, at 48.5,indicates a small contraction of the orders book.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Front Office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Welcome to our blog, Speaking of Precision. As Director of Technology and Industry Research for PMPA, I bring 38 years of hands-on experience in areas of manufacturing, quality and steelmaking. I help answer "HOW?","WITH WHAT?" and "REALLY?"